In particular locking and unlocking components for rear seat installations often have a manually actuatable locking and unlocking mechanism, by which a locking of a rear seat backrest of the rear seat installation with a vehicle structure can be produced and released. To increase the comfort, such rear seat installations are being provided increasingly more often with an electrically driven actuator, by which the locking mechanism can also be actuated by motor. Here, generally already existing, purely mechanical locking components are additionally provided with an electric actuation. In previously known solutions an electrically driven actuator is mounted here together with the locking mechanism on an adapter plate. By means of transmission elements, such as angle, lever, linkage and suchlike, which are also fastened on the adapter plate, a coupling takes place between the actuator and the locking mechanism for the transmission of the drive movement of the actuator to the locking mechanism.
With such a solution, it is possible to supplement already existing locking mechanisms with an electric actuation and hereby to construct different variants with the same mechanical locking mechanism with as little technical effort as possible. Solutions which are supplemented in such a way have the disadvantage, however, that they are relatively large and are not infrequently almost twice as large as the actual locking mechanism. The installation space and weight of such locking devices can therefore not be satisfactory. In particular owing to the large installation space, the actually intended simple achievement by this solution of different variants and their integration into different seat installations can therefore scarcely be achieved.